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Summary

• Despite COVID-era efforts to install HEPA filters and air quality sensors, constituents suggest that air quality in schools remains inadequate and impacts health.

• Poor indoor air can harm health, reduce student attendance and impair academic performance.

• Deploying effective filtration and ventilation, as well as properly maintaining HVAC systems, are essential to provide clean indoor air in schools.

• Air quality reporting for District schools is wanting, and many HVAC maintenance requests remain unresolved.

• Better air quality reporting, adhereing to professional ventilation standards and increasing supports for school facilities could help.

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In a joint October 2020 memo, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of General Services (DGS) and District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) announced that schools would receive robust ventilation, filtration and air quality monitoring support. Officials understood rightly that such measures were critical to safeguarding the health of students, school staff and the public at-large.

The State Board has heard concerns from constituents lately – from parents, students and educators – that school facilities’ air quality has been inadequate and uncomfortable. One parent, who wrote to city leaders late last year, relayed that her child’s school had gone without heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) for some time, and that filter usage in the school has been sporadic at best. Another shared that their 7-month-old contracted RSV (a serious respiratory virus to infants) via their daughter, who they suspect was exposed at school.

These accounts don’t necessarily evidence a District-wide, systemic issue with air quality in schools. But, they do raise questions the State Board is interested in answering: Do District schools have an air quality problem, and if they do, how can our city help them improve?

The importance of good quality air.

The concept of air quality is pretty intuitive when we think about it in an outdoor context. Remember June 2023? When Canadian wildfires brought thick smoke to the District? We understood at the time that the air quality was bad, and that avoiding the smoke outside, at least for prolonged periods of time, was important to our health.

While it might not be as readily evident to us, indoor air can range in quality and influence our health like outdoor air, sometimes more. Indoor air quality is determined by measuring the pollutants – both solid particulates and chemical gases – in a space.  These pollutants can come from natural and manmade sources, such as dust, cleaning supplies, pesticides and fuel emissions. The more concentrated these particles are in an indoor space, the lower the air quality.

Poor air quality can significantly impact people’s health, particularly children’s. It can interfere with breathing and cause headaches. It can even induce dizziness and fatigue, as well as interrupt focus. Prolonged and repeated exposure increases the likelihood that someone will experience such symptoms. Individuals with preexisting conditions, like asthma, are especially vulnerable.

In a classroom context, it’s obviously important to minimize the students’, educator’s and any support staff’s exposure to pollutants in the air. Doing so can reduce the transmission of illness, supporting higher student attendance rates and academic performance.

One publication from the Environmental Protection Agency recognized how poor indoor air quality can increase student absences, mostly due to resulting respiratory illnesses. Another article, published in the Journal of Indoor Environment and Health, reviewed the connection between ventilation rates and students’ academic performance. It found that better ventilation rates resulted in better performance – between 2% and 15% on achievement assessments.

How air quality is managed.

As mentioned earlier, air quality can be determined by measuring the concentration of specific pollutants in a space over a defined time period. “Good” air is achieved when pollutant concentration over a duration of time doesn’t exceed scientifically agreed thresholds for health. 

Filtration and ventilation are the practical methods for “cleaning” air – that is to say, reducing the concentration of pollutants. Filtration cleans the air by extracting particles and other contaminants before they enter a space. Ventilation exchanges air, replacing that which has accumulated pollutants with fresh air. These processes are the work of heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, or HVACs. 

Indoor air quality is therefore linked necessarily with the quality of HVAC machinery, operation and maintenance. High-quality HVAC systems with better filters and more efficient ventilation create spaces with more consistently clean air. HVAC technicians with better training and maintenance support uphold high performance standards. And more frequent, multi-variable monitoring plays a part, too, permitting more timely system adjustments when contaminant levels begin to creep up.

Because of measures introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, District of Columbia Public Schools should meet these performance standards.

What’s air quality like in District schools now?

Whether DCPS schools are still positioned to achieve optimal indoor air quality is at present difficult to ascertain. DCPS hasn’t issued an indoor air quality report since July 2022. And neither DGS nor DCPS publishes any sort of publicly available report detailing the regular condition or performance of HVAC systems in District school facilities. 

The Deputy Mayor for Education does publish a Master Facilities Plan that examines environment quality as part of its educational adequacy rating. But, it’s unclear how significantly air quality weights in the environment quality variable or overall educational adequacy calculations.

DGS also maintains a dashboard that overviews HVAC maintenance requests submitted by District government agencies. But, its utility in illustrating the state of HVAC systems in District public schools is quite limited. The few insights that can be gleaned from the dashboard, however, show that:

• As of January 14, 2025, over 85% of all open HVAC maintenance requests originate from DCPS schools.
• Of the open DCPS cases, close to 1 in 5 are designated high priority.
• Two in 5 high-priority requests belong to schools in Wards 7 and 8.
• Seven high-priority requests have been outstanding for at least one calendar year. One of those, submitted by Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Ward 8, has not been completed since at least 2022.
• There is no way to tell when a request was submitted.

If anecdotes from the public are taken as representative of the treatment of schools’ indoor air quality, though, it does appear that the District has a problem on its hands.

As mentioned earlier, one parent of an elementary student in Ward 4 relayed to the State Board that her 7-month-old developed RSV via a sibling’s exposure at school. That same parent also shared that, “Over the past year alone, our family has also battled COVID, flu and countless colds.” These bouts of illness she also attributes to her daughter “bringing infections home from school.” Another parent, from Ward 7, said, “Our child’s school represents the most significant hazard to our family’s health.” That parent added, “During the fall of the current school year, my child brought home from school five different respiratory illnesses… I’m tired.” Both parents urged that steps be taken to improve filtration and ventilation in schools.

A Ward 4 teacher also testified to the State Board about the need to improve air quality. “As a teacher,” she said, “I’ve seen, firsthand, students be incapacitated by labored breathing post COVID, increasingly frustrated by academic struggles brought on by post-COVID brain fog, and further academically impaired by weeks of illness that results in or compounds chronic absenteeism.” “Improving air quality,” she concluded, “is crucial to giving every child the opportunity to succeed without being hindered by preventable illness.”

The State Board has even heard laments from students about air quality in District schools. Worried about worsening, climate change-related weather conditions, one student urged for improvements to schools’ HVAC systems, saying that system underperformance poses risks to students’ in-class concentration and overall mental health. Another expressed concern that, in the context of climate change, school staffs’ current training level of how to use HVAC systems in emergency situations could leave students and staff vulnerable.

What can we do?

First, all of us – policymakers, school officials, educators, students and guardians – could benefit from better information. That starts with understanding the breadth of schools’ HVAC needs, as well as more consistent, comprehensive reporting on indoor air quality at schools. Doing so would help our education community create a roadmap for sustainable, effective technical solutions.

Another measure that might be considered has been suggested by several parents and educators: bring school facilities into compliance with the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-conditioning Engineers’ Standard 241. The standard establishes ventilation, filtration and airflow requirements that would support health by reducing disease transmission.

Setting aside for just a moment any specific air quality improvement tactics, or combinations of such, it’s clear that our school communities need support. It’s our city’s duty to act and to deliver the indoor air conditions they need to thrive. Existing channels, such as the Every Day Counts! Task Force and ongoing initiatives related to teacher retention and student safety and achievement, can help surface the path forward for healthier scholastic environments.

As always, the State Board stands ready to be a partner.